


Two, Then One

by rawrchelle



Series: Two, Then One [1]
Category: Naruto, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26017048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rawrchelle/pseuds/rawrchelle
Summary: Sakura’s always found meaning in the most hopeless of situations. It’s what got her through the hard days, the long nights, the years and years of waiting for Sasuke. So she pulls meaning out of thin air in this moment as she slowly stands and steps away from the man, unconscious but undoubtedly alive: he needed her, badly. She was simply brought to the place where she could save him.Sakura, Levi, and the choices they make.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)
Series: Two, Then One [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901542
Comments: 28
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am embarrassed. I don’t know what this is. I hardly know what happens after the 4th Shinobi War, and I hardly know what happens after the battle at Shiganshina. All I know is that this pairing would not leave me alone and I needed to purge it from my mind. Did I succeed, or did I just create a fleshed-out headcanon that will be with me forever? We have yet to find out.
> 
> I am making plot up. I don’t understand Marley and Paradis politics. It’s all background noise to Levi and Sakura’s relationship, so if you can accept that fact, then buckle up, we’re in for a ride!

Sakura can’t say she knows what happened.

What she knows is that it was so loud that her head felt like it was splitting. What she knows is that the air suddenly changed and went cold, and she saw the earth and the sky splitting, and it felt like some deep darkness was beckoning to her. What she knows is that as she was struggling to gain her footing, something or someone or some cruel twist of fate carried by the wind gave her a violent shove, and she was suddenly falling and falling and falling.

It couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity of blackness. Her breath was held, suspended in her lungs as she plummeted—and suddenly it was bright again, and she could see the clear blue of the sky.

She forced her body to reorient itself, feet down, arms shielding her face. She could see the green of the earth below—there were trees, so many trees, and all of them so big. The branches and leaves cut and scraped her skin as she fell through, and the force of the chakra lining her bottoms of her feet as she landed on a thick branch was enough to snap it and send her falling again.

But the buffer was enough. When she landed on the grass, tumbling and rolling, nothing in her body broke. She’d have some significant bruising, but nothing a little time and patience wouldn’t heal. It was certainly better than what could’ve happened, considering the distance she fell.

After standing to her feet, she glanced around her. This was not where she was before.

Sakura remembered this: The barren lands of the Earth Country. Sai and Naruto. A hard battle, a seemingly losing battle.

But she was alone. And what she saw was green upon green upon green.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard an explosion. And she did the one thing she knew how: she ran towards it.

The trees gave way to a vast plain of flat land. The source of the explosion wasn’t far; she could see smoke trailing into the sky, still thick and fresh. She crossed the distance easily, but when she arrived, she couldn’t say she understood what she saw. A wooden cart, obliterated to pieces. Two four-legged creatures, dead. Chunks of flesh scattered everywhere. And a body, in the tall grass, right by the creek.

It was bad. His middle was split open, organs spilling out, staining all of his clothes with blood. Shrapnel was buried deep in his face. And still, as she pressed two fingers to his neck, she could feel a pulse. As she hovered her palm over his mouth, she could feel faint breathing.

And so she got to work.

Sakura can’t say she knows what happened. But she knows this: the man likely would have died without her. So she doesn’t question the sequence of events that led her here—she merely accepts that they happened, and that they needed to happen. Even when people arrive on more of those brown, four-legged creatures, sporting the same clothing as the man she saved, pointing weapons at her, she raises her hands and is not afraid.

She’s always found meaning in the most hopeless of situations. It’s what got her through the hard days, the long nights, the years and years of waiting for Sasuke. So she pulls meaning out of thin air in this moment as she slowly stands and steps away from the man, unconscious but undoubtedly alive: he needed her, badly. She was simply brought to the place where she could save him.

* * *

This world, she thinks, is so alien.

She deduces that it must be another world. Nothing else would explain these stone buildings, tall and abundant, or these impeccably lined cobblestone streets. Nothing else would explain the mysterious technology these people wield. (3DMG, someone had told her. She whispers the name over and over again, shaping the sounds with her lips until they become comfortable to say.) Nothing else would explain why they need this technology to fly, to attach themselves to surfaces, to do all the things that Sakura only needs a little push of chakra to achieve. Nothing else would explain why these people feel none of the energy that she has coursing through her system, this innate strength that she began to hone as a child.

And nothing else would explain these walls, so tall they look like they touch the sky, looming above her wherever she goes.

When she gets home, however she may, she will never speak badly of the Konoha Council ever again. The bureaucracy here is stifling, infuriating—just old men talking over each other and trying to prove each other wrong—but Sakura answers whatever questions they throw at her, although she can tell that her answers mean little to them. They don’t understand her, the way she doesn’t understand them.

She is given a cell. It’s hardly cage, given her strength, but she doesn’t fight. A woman with glasses and an eyepatch visits her every day to talk to her and ask her questions. She’s a little crazed and very curious, but Sakura likes her because she believes her. She repeats the name until it’s committed to memory.

“Hange, when will I get to leave? I can’t stay here.”

“I don’t know, but I’m working on it. In the meantime, can you explain to me again how you healed Levi? Wait, can you heal me? Let me go grab a knife…”

Levi. Sakura hasn’t seen him since he was a mess of flesh and bones by the river. She hardly remembers his face; when she tries to conjure it up, she can only think of the shrapnel, and how red his pulverized insides were.

* * *

He comes and sees her on the third night.

He is whole and he is human and he is alive. Sakura lights up when she sees him, jumps up to her feet and closes her fingers around the bars of her cell. “It’s Levi, right? How are you feeling? Your guts were a bit of a patchwork job, given how close you were to the explosion—you can’t have possibly fully healed yet, what are you doing walking around? Also, I had to take out your spleen, sorry.”

Her barrage of words seems to have little to no effect on him, and she is suddenly reminded of Sasuke. His face only flashes for a moment behind her eyelids when she blinks, but it leaves her winded nonetheless.

Sasuke is out there, somewhere. And there is no way for her to tell him that she’s here.

“I’m Levi Ackerman,” Levi says. “Thank you for saving my life.” A pause. “Will I be fine without my spleen?” His voice jolts her back to the present, to this alien world, to this dark cell and to the sight of the shadows of the torch on the wall dancing across his skin. His face is still scarred from the shrapnel; she had deemed it lower priority and quickly closed what needed to be closed.

“You’ll be fine, technically. Your immune system is weaker now though, so try to stay hygienic. Oh, I’m Haruno Sakura, by the way.”

Levi Ackerman. What a strange name.

“I know. I read the reports. Come, Haruno. You’re free to go.” As he says this, he’s pulling a key out of his pocket and unlocking her cell door. “Hange is waiting for us.”

“Sakura is my given name, not Haruno,” she tells him. “It’s different where I come from.”

He only contemplates this for a moment, but it doesn’t seem to matter much to him. “Sakura, then. Let’s go.”

“Wait. I want to do a quick follow-up, if that’s okay.” Before he can accept or decline, her hand is already around his wrist and pulling him towards her bed. “It’ll be quick, I promise.” She feels him resist, but not much; a tiny burst of chakra has him laying down. He looks a little stunned.

They know nothing about her. Despite their questioning, they’ve only asked about her medical abilities and how she got here. They have no idea that she is strong, that she’s a fighter, that she could easily topple the walls that surround them, and she had decided not to tell them. She can see from the look Levi gives her that he is not someone who lays down easily, so she pretends not to notice how the gears turn in his head as he stares at her, trying to figure out how he is on his back.

Her hands glow green as they hover over his middle. “You should breathe,” she advises him, “or else I’ll have saved your life for nothing.”

“This is what you did to me back then?”

It’s amazing. The damage she predicted he’d still have is not nearly as severe as she thought it would be. Nevertheless, she connects the tissue that is struggling and helps along the recovery that still needs some time. When she finishes there, she moves to his face—her fingers barely brush across his cheeks, wiping away the scars marring the skin there.

“There. All better. Can you sit up and tell me how you feel?”

Levi pushes himself upright. He touches his own face. “All the pain is gone.”

She smiles. “Great!”

Even in the dim lighting, she can tell his eyes are a stormy gray. When he stands, even though it’s just barely, he has to look up at her. And yet, even with his short stature, Sakura gets the feeling that he is not someone to be messed with, and that perhaps it’s a blessing that she’s on his good side.

Still. How strong could these people be? Surely, they don’t compare to the strength she has seen, the strength that she’s born from.

As she follows Levi up the stone steps and out of her supposed prison, she wonders if she has more secrets, or he does.

* * *

They say she is in Trost, although that means little to her. At her request, Levi brings her to a library, where she spends all day reading. When he finds her again in the evening, she has gone through several books and cried more times than she can count.

There is nothing here. There is no knowledge of what had happened to her, why she ended up here, or how she could possibly go home. Instead, she sees the same map over and over again, and every book only goes back one hundred years.

And the drawings. They are hideous. Monstrous. Grotesque.

Titans, they call them. Creatures that eat humans for sport.

That’s what the walls are for.

Sakura never thought that anything could be worse than what she’s seen. That nothing could have felt more hopeless than the war. That nothing could be more heartbreaking than seeing Sasuke walk away from her yet again.

And yet, here she is.

Her eyes are red and swollen when she looks up at Levi. He looks at her with unfeeling eyes, and she finds a comforting familiarity in it.

“This place,” she whispers. “This world. How do you people live in it?”

“Desperately,” Levi answers without hesitation. “Pathetically.”

Sakura closes her nth book of the day and stands up. “I can fight. Let me help.” Because if there’s one thing about her that people can count on, it’s that her heart bleeds and she will give up every part of herself if it means protecting the people around her—even if it’s these strangers. Because she can see some of Naruto’s endless enthusiasm in Hange. Because she can see Sasuke’s quiet suffering in Levi.

Levi scoffs. “You don’t know the first thing about fighting.”

It’s a gamble, but Sakura decides to take it. It’s been a long day of disappointments and giving-ups and she feels like she has nothing left to lose. She gives no warning and steps forward, throwing a punch at him. She just barely sees his eyes widen before he dodges to the left. She catapults herself over the table to get behind him and swipes her legs underneath his feet, but he jumps—as he lands, he spins to face her and tackles her to the floor, his arm pinning her neck down. It is tight and she struggles to breathe—he is not playing. His eyes are narrowed into slits and she can see that he is prepared to kill her.

He’s strong, she won’t deny that. But she is stronger. In the next moment, their positions are switched, and she is the one pinning him down.

“I can fight,” she says again, watching his expression morph from surprise, to confusion, and then to acceptance. “I’m strong.”

* * *

Levi doesn’t hesitate. He talks to Hange immediately, and at dawn of the next morning, they ride out with Sakura and the rest of his squad outside of Wall Rose, away from the civilians. He feels Sakura’s body pressed to his back the entire time; despite her self-proclaimed abilities, she doesn’t know how to ride a damn horse.

When Hange deems that they’ve ridden far enough, they dismount. “You said you can fight,” he says to Sakura. “Show us.”

She smiles. Everything about her seems soft and sweet but there is something just underneath her skin, Levi can feel it—something menacing, something dangerous. “I need someone to fight if I’m going to show you anything.”

He glances at Hange, and then at Mikasa, Armin, and Connie. “Fine. You can fight me.” But as he moves to take off his 3DMG, she puts her hand on his.

“No. Keep that on. I want you to use it against me.”

The idea is absurd. She is suggesting that he use lethal blades against her. She is unarmed, she is pink hair and a miracle worker and wet, red-ringed eyes, and she has a death wish.

( _Although who wouldn’t, upon discovering what they’ve stumbled into?_ )

“This is flat ground,” he says. “Our equipment doesn’t work well here.”

She points to the west. “There are trees there. Will that work?”

But if she has a death wish, who is he to keep it from her?

Once they reach the trees, Levi begins to explain the equipment, because he’s not some unfair bastard who takes pleasure from fighting dirty. “The cables are to maneuver from one place to another. The gas—”

“Is for fine-tuning the movements, I know. I read all about it yesterday. And those blades.” She glances at the weapons hanging at his side. “I know they’re meant for Titans, but feel free to use them on me. What? Don’t look at me like that. You won’t take me seriously unless you go all out, right?”

She is delusional, Levi thinks. She has no idea what she’s in for.

“My weapons pouch was confiscated so you have a bit of the upper hand,” she muses. “I guess it’s not impossible to assume they’re surgical tools, but I think that was a bit of a stretch. Anyway, Levi, don’t go easy on me, alright?”

Delusional is too gracious of a word. Crazy? Suicidal? Completely batshit insane?

He blinks, and she is gone.

_Where’d she go?!_

Levi hardly has time to react before he feels the air above him move. He barely shoots out a cable and pulls himself away in time before she makes impact—and when she does, there’s a small crater in the ground, bearing resemblance to the imprint of a boulder.

He doesn’t have the luxury to think about it, because in the next second, she’s in front of his face again. How? He’s hanging off the trunk of a tree—

The punch hits him square in the face and he goes flying. He only freefalls for a moment before he catches himself, shooting his hooks upwards and propelling himself with his gas. Fine. If she somehow has the same mobility as him with 3DMG, he won’t go easy on her.

The next time they make contact is five seconds later; he is tilted upwards and she is pushing downwards on him; his blades are pressing into her arms but they aren’t cutting and he feels her strength pressing him down, far stronger than mere gravity—his eyes glance at her feet and he sees that they are planted firmly on the vertical surface of the tree, as if the laws of physics don’t apply to her. One heartbeat later and she wins the battle of strength and he loses his footing, swinging away. But before he can retract his cables and reposition himself, she runs— _runs_ —up the tree, and can he be blamed for his slow reaction time? Is his shock unjustified when she throws a bare fist at the branch that he’s anchored to and splinters it into hundreds of pieces?

When he falls this time, he does not try to catch himself. All he can think is, _how?_

And when he lands, he doesn’t hit the hard ground like he expects—she catches him. _Catches him._ Albeit not cleanly, and they both go tumbling, but she was above him a second ago and then she was below him—

He has no words. As he lays on the ground and listens to their panting, he turns his head to look at her. Her chest is heaving and her impossibly pink hair is mussed but she is smiling at him, and there is nothing malicious about it but this woman both nearly killed him and saved his life just now and Levi finally understands that he needs to take her seriously.

“Your 3DMG looks so cool. Can you teach me how to use it?”

* * *

Chakra, she calls it. A power that she draws from within that lets her stitch flesh back together, walk on water, move faster than the eye can see. She can create invisible shields on her skin. She can cast illusions. She can summon animals.

Levi can’t stop thinking about her.

The government is informed about her abilities. She is granted temporary citizenship. She is under his watch, although he doesn’t know what for—if anything, it should be the other way around. With her on their side, they might have a chance. They might win.

She moves with a sort of grace he’s never seen in any soldier before. Even when learning the balance and the power of their gear, her movements are fluid, like she’s more comfortable off the ground than on it. She unsheathes the blades easily, slices into dummy Titans like they’re nothing. Something that takes people years to master, she successfully does so in a week.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says to her one day as she’s refilling her gas. “This isn’t your war.”

And when she answers, she sounds so sad, so defeated. “I know. I already won my war. But.” Her body is so strong, her intellect so sharp, but Levi has come to learn that she will cry whenever the wind changes. “I don’t know how to get home. And fighting is the only thing that makes me forget.”

Levi places a hand on her shoulder. “You’re a part of our family now. It’s a shitty, dysfunctional family, but at least it’s something.”

When she laughs, cheeks still wet with tears, her voice bounces off the trees, ringing clear as a bell and echoing in his heart.

* * *

The taste of red wine is deeper and fuller than the sake she is used to.

Sakura used to not be much of a drinker, but times have changed. She sits on the floor of her room, underneath the window, staring at the silhouette of the window frame that the moonlight casts on the opposite wall.

Did Naruto and Sai win that fight? Did they survive? Are they looking for her? Do they think she’s dead?

Where is Sasuke now, on his long and lonely travels? When will he notice that she’s gone?

How will she ever get home? Or…is this her home now? This nightmare place where people don’t nearly have the capabilities to protect themselves from the threats outside the walls?

She can help. Surely, she can do _some_ good here.

Her eyes flicker towards the movement at her open door, and land on Levi. He’s wearing his uniform like always, and Sakura thinks it’s so dull and boring. Everyone wears the same wash of whites and browns and blacks—her own uniform is hanging in her closet, but she can’t bring herself to put it on yet. More specifically, she can’t bring herself to take off her own signature red.

“What are you doing on the floor?” Levi asks. He sounds bored.

She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Trying to reason some meaning into my life.” She holds up her wine, which she’s drinking straight from the bottle. “Wanna join me?”

She watches him consider her. Levi is all sharp edges and quick calculations; his eyes go from the bottle, to her face, to the floor. When he finally makes a decision, he walks with conviction, pulls out the chair of her desk, and sits. He does not take the offered drink.

“Whose are those?” she asks, gesturing towards the small pile of books on her desk. They were the only sign of this room being lived in before it was given to Sakura—and even now, it still doesn’t look particularly lived in. It’s not like she has any belongings here.

Levi regards the books. “Those were Petra’s.” Sakura notes the past tense, and silently understands.

“Was Petra important to you?”

It would be easy to draw the parallels between him and Sasuke. The brooding personality. The lack of small talk. But Sasuke always had a way of compartmentalizing his emotions, stuffing them down so deep that she can’t reach them no matter how hard she tried. But Levi—

When she asks him this question, his eyes are so undeniably sad.

“They were all important to me,” he says. He sounds tired.

It doesn’t matter what world she’s in. Loss is around every corner.

She takes another swig of her wine, and says quietly, “I want to go home.”

“I don’t know how to do that for you.”

She laughs wryly. “Me neither. Which is ironic, since you people seem to think I can do anything and everything under the sun.”

Sakura quickly learned in the beginning that Levi is not one to offer false comforts, and so they sit in silence for a long time. She listens to his slow, even breathing, and tries to match hers to it. As she thinks about Naruto’s bright goofy grin and the way he says her name, she gently knocks her head against the wall behind her to dispel the image. Levi’s unasked question is obvious in the way he raises an eyebrow at her, but she doesn’t give him an answer. Instead she steers the conversation elsewhere, to a place where she knows it won’t break her.

“I’ve been thinking about your 3DMG. It’s so heavy, and yet you move so fast. How long does it take to develop that kind of strength?”

“For most people, a few years.”

“How long did it take you?”

She also learned that he is not a bragger. “Not quite that long.”

“You’re a good fighter, Levi. Really good. I’d be really scared if you had the same abilities as me.” She smiles cheekily. “Right now I’m only kind of scared.”

“We must look pathetic to you.”

“No.” Sakura looks at the bottle in her hand. It’s still half full, but she sets it down on the floor anyway and stands up. She towers over him sitting in her chair, but she needs to put a hand against the wall to keep her balance. “You’re not pathetic, okay? You’re not pathetic.”

“I wasn’t talking about myself specifically.”

She takes Levi’s face between her hands. She feels him stiffen underneath her palms.

His hair is different. His eyes are narrower, but not quite as dark, speckled like a stormy sky. He is shorter. But if she tries hard enough and pushes the edges of her imagination—

He places a hand on top of hers, but does not push her away. “Who are you pretending I am?”

* * *

How, he thinks. And why? Why is it that a woman of her caliber is so devout to such a fallible man?

Levi didn’t coin Sakura to be a particularly chatty person about the inner workings of her heart, given that she is surrounded by strangers and hardly lets her guard down, but the wine loosens her lips. And when her hands fall from his face to rest on his shoulders, she whispers a name: Sasuke.

He hardly has to ask. The words “Who’s Sasuke?” prompts a long, long story—one that has her shoulders slumping as she sits on her bed.

Levi doesn’t understand all the details, but he gets the general gist. “How do you know he loves you too if he didn’t choose to stay?”

“I just do.”

He scowls. “You’re fucking telling me that you, a woman who could topple our walls if you so choose, continue to love a man who has threatened your life and your home?”

“Love isn’t a choice, Levi.”

“Like hell it isn’t.” His voice comes out as a snarl, and it surprises even himself. “You choose to hold on the way I choose to fight. You choose to ignore the shitty parts of him the way he chose to do things that would hurt you. Life is all about _choices_ , Sakura—it’s pitiful that a soldier like you doesn’t realize that.” She bristles at his words. He sees her hands tightening into fists. She is angry. “Life is too fucking short to go soul-searching. If I loved a woman as incredible as you, I would fight every day to stay.”

He didn’t quite mean it that way, but the implication hangs heavy in the air. They glare at each other from across the room, and he counts the seconds—one, two, three, four—and her fists finally relax.

“Please leave,” she says quietly.

Levi doesn’t need to be told twice. In the next second, he is on his feet and out the door. For a brief moment, it almost feels like he’s running away.

* * *

It’s big. So big. The sketches don’t do them justice. She can only stare in awe and terror as Levi shouts instructions to the people around her. Mikasa (the only one whose name feels easy in her mouth) dismounts her horse and easily takes it down.

It was one Titan. Just one, maybe eleven meters tall. It’s not so much the size of it that stuns her, but just how _human_ it looks, and yet how inhuman it acted. Its eyes were empty. Its movements were sporadic. And when Mikasa cut into its nape, it continued to smile, as though it didn’t care that it was about to die.

“Sakura. Are you alright?” Levi, on his horse, trots up beside her.

“Yeah.” She swallows. “It’s just…”

“Fucking nightmarish.”

“Yeah. There’s…really no way to revert them back to humans?”

“No way that we know how without some big sacrifices, but if you have any insights, we’d love to hear them.”

Sakura dazedly shakes her head. “No. I have no insights.”

She knows she’ll burn her fingertips, but she does it anyway—she reaches up and touches her headband. The metal is hot underneath the afternoon sun, but feeling it there brings her comfort. Because when she stares down at what she’s wearing, she sees white and brown and green. They say the emblem on her cloak symbolizes the wings of freedom, but she has never felt more trapped in her life.

“Well, be on the lookout,” Levi says. “There aren’t too many Titans anymore nowadays, but we can never be too sure.” She nods, and his eyes linger on her for a moment longer before he turns away.

She sees the way he watches her. His eyes never left her when he was training her, and even now, she notices him looking at her far more than anyone else on his squad. Is he simply curious, and trying to figure her out? Does he think she’s a threat? She can’t tell—his eyes are shrouded when he’s out in the world, unprotected by the darkness.

But if Sakura is good at anything, it’s at reading unexpressive men. She feels that there’s a kindness to him, despite his foul mouth and sour expression—so whatever it is that he’s thinking about when he looks at her, it can’t possibly be ill-willed.

* * *

She sees the Marley airships, big and mystical and flying in the sky. She sees Titans grabbing soldiers and closing their jaws around them like a quick snack. And then she remembers Levi’s words:

_Life is too fucking short to go soul-searching._

In this world, people look despair in the face and march forward anyway.

_If I loved a woman as incredible as you, I would fight every day to stay._

And she understands.

Life is full of choices. She chose Sasuke again and again and again.

And the cold, hard truth is that he never chose her. Not even once.

* * *

She finds him in his room that night, writing a report. Levi feels her before he sees her—perhaps it’s something about the chakra she possesses, but there is a constant thrum of power around her, a quiet strength that just barely disturbs the air as she moves.

She knocks on his door and he tells her to come in, but when the door opens and closes, he still doesn’t look up from his report and continues to write.

“Do you guys usually suffer that many casualties?”

“We lost the majority of our veterans a few years ago, so yes.”

“It sounds like an impossible war,” she says. “I hear things when I go out. There’s dissent among the people.”

“Truth, in the face of hopelessness, can be a very divisive thing.” Upon finishing his current sentence, Levi puts down his fountain pen and stands to face Sakura. “Do you need anything?”

She smiles softly. “I saw that hit you took earlier today. You must have a few bruised ribs, at least. Let me fix you up.”

She’s not wrong. He feels an ache all throughout his torso. It pains him to even breathe. This is not the worst shape he’s ever been in, and he knows he’ll be fine in a few weeks, but she is a miracle worker and she is here and she is offering, and he has no reason to decline, so without a word, he lays down on his bed.

Sakura doesn’t touch him when she works. Her hands simply hover over him with that warm, green glow, and with each subsequent inhalation, it becomes easier to breathe.

“We thought we were alone for so long,” he mutters, more to himself than to her. “And then we learn that there are humans beyond the walls. And here you are, living proof that there are other worlds out there.” He closes his eyes. “We are tiny and insignificant. So what if we all die? Humanity will continue on, even if it’s not on this plane of existence. Nothing we do matters here.”

“But you’re going to keep fighting, right?” she asks. From behind his eyelids, her green glow disappears, and all that’s left is the orange flame of his candle. He feels Sakura’s hands come to a rest on his stomach. The touch is comforting.

He opens his eyes and looks at her. “I’m not going to lay down and die, if that’s what you’re asking.” He’s never seen eyes as green as hers.

“No, of course you won’t.” She smiles softly, and he knows she’s thinking of her home. “I know a few shinobi who fight without chakra. You’d fit right in in Konoha.”

“I wouldn’t fight if I were there.”

“No?”

“Your war is over. There would be no need. I would open a teahouse.” At this point, Sakura outright laughs at him, and Levi frowns. He was being serious.

“Well, you’d have some competition, because we have a lot of teahouses.” He twitches when he feels her fingers curl on his stomach, playing with the folds of his shirt. “There’s no need for fighting because the war is over, huh? That’s such a novel idea. Maybe this world isn’t so bad after all. Levi, I—” She hesitates, and he sits up. There is no hope though, he is still looking up at her—even standing up straight, she still has an inch on him. “I want to thank you. For taking care of me.”

“I hardly did anything. You take care of yourself just fine.” For some reason, his voice is hoarse.

“No, but—you talk to me and listen to me. It helps a lot.”

He scoffs and turns away, but even against the wall, he can see her shadow. There is no escaping her. “What, has Sasuke skewed your perception of men so much that the act of me treating you like a human being means this much to you?”

It’s a low blow, and he knows it. But it’s been on his mind, and he has to know if that’s the reason why she will always find him first, or if there’s actually something else here. Because he can’t stop thinking about her. When he closes his eyes, he sees the blur of pink and green, he sees that insignia of her metal headband, he feels her literally breathing life back into his body. He hears her crying at night sometimes, through these thin walls, so distraught and wracked with grief, but when she greets him in the morning she is smiling again, despite her eyes being red and swollen. She is strong in every definition of the word, and she is worthy—definitely more worthy than he is.

And she is strong now. His words were scathing, and yet she doesn’t lash at him. “That’s not fair, Levi.”

“Life isn’t fair.”

“I keep on thinking, how did this happen? _Why_ did this happen? Why is it that the moment I land in this place, that explosion goes off? Why did I end up right where you were? There has to be a reason, don’t you think?”

So she thinks it’s fate that brought them together. “I don’t think there’s a reason for anything. I think I just got very, very lucky.”

“You don’t think there’s a reason why I literally fell from one dimension to another?”

“I don’t know if you noticed, Sakura, but however destiny works in your world, it doesn’t work here. You’ve seen it. People die, often for no reason. The good ones suffer horrible deaths, and the selfish, arrogant pigs continue to sit in their castles, comfy and cozy, oblivious to what really happens out there. I’ve said goodbye more times I can count. If there’s any higher being out there somewhere, it’s doing an incredibly shitty job.”

Their opposing beliefs are inconsolable, but Sakura is stubborn, if nothing else. “Are you saying that you’d rather have died? That it would have been better if I didn’t bring you back to this miserable life?”

“I’m saying that there’s no rhyme or reason to what happens to any of us.” Finally finding the strength to look at more than her shadow, Levi turns his head upwards. The gaze that he meets is fiery, determined—he doesn’t know why she’s so worked up.

“When I said that wasn’t fair, I wasn’t talking about life.” Sakura moves to sit down beside him, close enough that their thighs touch. Levi isn’t sure if the concept of personal space is different where she comes from, or if this is just who she is. “I meant the way you talk about yourself. It’s not fair that you don’t think your life is worth something. It’s not fair that you compare yourself to Sasuke. Because you’re right—at the end of the day, every single day, he always chose himself over me. He’s selfish. You’re not. You’re clearly the better man.”

“And yet you still love him.”

“I will always love him. The same way you will always love Petra. And your other fallen comrades. Love doesn’t go away just because you won’t see them ever again.”

Levi looks at her. “Sasuke isn’t dead.”

“He might as well be, right?” She smiles sadly. “ _I_ might as well be.” She sighs and flops backwards, bouncing slightly on his mattress. “Do you think I could make a life for myself here?”

“Sure, if you don’t die.”

“Would you want to make a life with me?”

The air between them stills. He looks at her. Her hair is fanned around her head like a halo and her arms are stretched upwards, revealing the outline of her body against his sheets. She asks the question like it’s easy—and maybe it is for her, because she has nothing left to lose.

And what about him? What does he have to lose?

“I can’t promise a life,” he tells her. “But I can promise you this moment.”

“That’s a start, I guess.” She smiles, still a little sad but not quite as much as before, and pulls him down. She doesn’t use any chakra when she does so, but he gives in easily all the same.

Levi never thought that the feeling of hope has a taste, but he finds it on her lips.

* * *

_“It’s called flash-stepping,”_ she had told him, before explaining how it worked. Still, hearing about it is different from seeing it in action.

She wears the 3DMG, but rarely uses it. The only thing she consistently utilizes are the blades—otherwise, she’s grabbing Titans by the ankles and throwing them to the ground to access their nape, or flash-stepping up their lumbering bodies to reach their shoulders. There is beauty to her brute strength, but what Levi learns from watching her in battle is that no matter how adept she is at taking on Titans, it is clear that she’s spent her entire life fighting humans that are likely far more skilled at hand-to-hand combat than the people of this world. The soldiers she faces have no chance against her—she moves too fast for them to aim their rifles, and once she’s close enough, they’re as good as gone.

Clearing out the Marley airships that visit the edge of their island has become an easy job for them. Sakura is more of an asset to humanity than Eren ever was.

Levi scowls at this thought. Fucking _Eren_.

His mind doesn’t stay there for long when he sees the bright pink of Sakura’s hair approaching. As she walks, she swipes her hand across her face, effectively closing a nasty gash. She makes it look as easy as breathing.

“That’s the last of them,” she tells him when he’s within earshot. “Connie had it pretty rough there for a while, but I fixed him up. He’s still unconscious, but he’ll be fine.”

He nods. “Thanks.” Not only does he not worry about her, but he worries less about the rest of his subordinates as well—there has not been a single casualty in his squad since Sakura joined their expeditions. But his old worries are replaced with new ones. He wonders what’s happening across the ocean. What Eren is up to.

There is still so much they don’t know.

Sakura reaches out to brush the hair out of his eyes, and he jolts, as if burned. Her hand retracts and her eyes widen. “Sorry.”

“Not while we’re working.”

“Sorry.”

She wears her heart on her sleeve and he knows she is hurt by his reaction, but no matter how safe they feel, they’re still outside the walls. He sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles loudly, and their horses come running. “It’s time to regroup. Let’s go.”

“Okay.” It doesn’t go unnoticed how easily she mounts her horse now. Just a few months ago, she had never even seen one before—now she looks just like one of them, with the wings of freedom on her back and the 3DMG hanging from her waist. She still wears her headband though, and it glints in her hair when the sun hits it at the right angle. These days, it seems to be the only connection she has to her home.

What would it be like if the roles were reversed? What if he fell out of her sky instead of her out of his? Would he miss this place? Or would it be a relief?

He shakes the thought from his mind. No point in thinking about it.

* * *

Sakura doesn’t really know what this is, but she needs it.

Her nights with Levi make her feel grounded. Simply falling asleep pressed against another living body makes things so much easier. He is harsh on the battlefield—brutally honest and fixated solely on survival—but behind closed doors, he is different. He listens to her talk about Naruto, he lets her explain to him what ramen and chopsticks are, and sometimes he even smiles. She isn’t sure if there is a name for what they’re doing but it’s the warmest and safest she’s felt since she dropped from the heavens and straight into his life.

Levi isn’t a man of tomorrows and she understands that, but. She needs _something_ to hold onto.

So she asks him one night when they’re lying in bed, bare skin pressed to bare skin. “Is this something we’re doing to pass the time and relieve the perpetual feeling of impending doom, or…?” She uses the word _we_ to buffer the _you_ that she means, but she knows he understands.

His answer isn’t quite straightforward, but for the person who loved Sasuke until the ends of the world, it is plenty. “I don’t do anything to simply pass the time.”

“So it’s the impending doom, then,” she says—but she is beaming as she buries her face in his shoulder.

“I could ask the same of you. Is this something you’re doing just to ease the pain of existing here?”

Her happiness is pretty quickly snuffed out these days, but this might be a record. “Yes,” she says, voice muffled against his skin, “but also no.” When he doesn’t respond, she moves to prop her head in her palm to look at him. His expression reads unbothered, but she thinks he might be, just a little bit, because his eyes are fixated on the ceiling and he refuses to look at her.

“You’re not wrong,” she tells him. “Being here is…excruciating. Not because of the hell that exists here, because truthfully, I’m used to hell—but with every passing day, I feel like I’m losing who I am. I dream about home every night. And then I wake up and I’m here. And I’m not Naruto’s best friend, or Kakashi’s former student, or Tsunade’s apprentice, or Ino’s lifelong rival…here, I’m just humanity’s military asset. I have no history.” She bites her bottom lip to keep it from trembling, but she knows she won’t be able to stop her tears once they come. “There is _nothing_ to hold onto here, Levi. Except for you.”

“So it’s to ease the pain,” he concludes. He still won’t look at her. His jaw is tight.

She reaches out to touch his face. “Can’t I feel all those things _and_ still care about you? Are they mutually exclusive?” As the seconds tick past, she feels his jaw relax under her touch. And when he finally moves, it’s to kiss her neck, teeth scraping her skin in such a way that her breath catches in her throat.

“I want you,” he says, voice low. His breath is hot on her skin. “And I don’t want you thinking about some other place or some other man when I’m with you. I know I’m selfish. You deserve someone better, but I’m selfish.”

Sakura’s arms wrap around him tightly as the tears finally escape her eyes. “I don’t think about Sasuke when I’m with you,” she whispers, voice trembling. “And you’re not selfish. But I’m glad you think you are.”

He moves until he is above her. His hair tickles her face and she pushes it up and away, holding his head between her hands. She looks at him through her blurred vision and sees Levi, a man whose stormy grey eyes never turn red, a man she looks down at to speak to, a man who chooses her every single night.

She pulls him down for a kiss and decides to choose him too.

* * *

The Rumbling, they call it. Sakura understands why. It begins exactly that way, with a low rumble in the ground, a distant trembling from deep below. She feels it as she’s walking with Hange and Levi through the streets in the heart of Mitras, after having given a report on her successes since she’s joined the military. Her citizenship has been extended another three months. They’d be mailing the official papers to her at the military barracks in Trost.

She has an address now. A room. A place to return to at night.

When they feel the first quakes, they stop in their tracks. Sakura looks down at the neatly lined cobblestone ground, and thinks about the Underground below.

“Levi—” It’s Hange’s voice. “Wall Sina…”

Sakura and Levi’s eyes follow the direction Hange is pointing in. In the distance, she sees the source of the rumbling they feel underneath their feet—Wall Sina is slowly crumbling and falling apart. All three of them, along with every other citizen on the street, are frozen as they watch the wall collapse, revealing Titan after Titan. They’re big, bigger than any Sakura has seen before—and for the first time, she wonders if her strength alone is enough to stop all of them.

It’s a domino effect—from the initial breaking point, Wall Sina continues to collapse, sending rocks and boulders falling and reverberations shaking the ground beneath them. Everything is falling apart. Sakura looks down again and thinks of the Underground—

With the force of the wall falling in a perfect circle around them, everything will collapse. She looks at Levi and Hange on either side of her—none of them are geared up. Sakura acts quicker than she thinks; both of her arms snake around their middles and she jumps onto the nearest rooftop, and for all intents and purposes begins flying. She can’t save all the citizens of Mitras, or the poor souls who will inevitably be crushed below, but she can save these two.

“Sakura—what are you doing—” She’s moving so fast Hange can hardly breath or manage a sentence.

Levi seems to understand before she explains herself. “We need to move. The ground’s eventually going to collapse under us.”

But where? Where can she go? They are surrounded by chaos and Titans and everything is falling apart. She lands on a clock tower and surveys her surroundings, heart pounding in her chest.

“There’s a supplies warehouse to the east,” Levi says, pointing in some vague direction. “We can gear up there.”

“Is there time?” Hange asks.

“There has to be. We’re useless otherwise. Sakura, can you get us there?”

She watches the civilians screaming in the streets, the children crying, the men crouching on the ground and covering their heads because they’re too frightened to move. The sight is all too familiar to her.

“Yeah, I can. Hang on tight.” And she grabs them again and off she goes, pushing off rooftop after rooftop.

“The Titans will go south,” Hange says as they fly. “Any damage they create is just collateral. If we can somehow avoid their path…”

“What the fuck is Eren thinking?” Levi snarls. “Does he not care about all the people he’ll kill from this?”

Even in this world, Sakura thinks sadly, there is a man who will destroy everything if it means getting what he wants.

When they arrive at the warehouse, the Military Police are already gearing up. From their quick and panicked chatter, it sounds like they’re supposed to evacuate the citizens, although Sakura has no idea where they’d evacuate to. Nowhere is safe. If Wall Sina has fallen, there is no doubt that the other walls have fallen too. If, by some miracle, people survive all these Titans rampaging south, what will protect them from the smaller Titans that will inevitably come? What will protect them if Marley troops make it this far inland?

“I need to go back and report on the situation,” Hange says after finishing strapping herself in and checking her cables. “Levi, you and Sakura get back to Trost somehow. Gather the rest of the Survey Corps. You need to find Eren. He should be on the island somewhere.”

“Got it.”

Levi and Hange hardly share a goodbye as she runs, shooting her cables out the warehouse door and flying off. Sakura is still struggling with her gear, trying to slip her leg through the straps, but her hands are shaking. She’s faced disaster before, but never of this magnitude. Never with the knowledge that the people here have no real, feasible way to fight and survive.

Levi, already properly geared up, grabs her wrists and holds her steady. When she looks at him, he shows none of the fear that she feels inside. He spends every waking moment thinking of things like this, she knows—he is always still awake when she falls asleep, and already out of bed when she wakes up. Levi is always mentally prepared for the worst and it helps him steel himself during this moment when he squeezes her wrists until she stops moving.

She thinks it’s uncharacteristic of him to lean down and help tighten the straps around her thighs, but she lets him. She lets him double check that everything is tight enough around her torso, that the gas is coming out smoothly, that none of the triggers are faulty. And then she wonders if this is his way of saying goodbye.

“Levi,” she whispers.

“I have more confidence that you’ll make it out of this than I will,” he says as he straightens up.

She grabs his collar and tugs until he’s on his tiptoes, until they’re eye to eye and nose to nose. “You said you’d fight every day to stay,” she hisses through clenched teeth. “Prove it. _Fight._ ”

He shoves her hands away. His expression is even. There is no hint of the vulnerable man she knows under the cover of night—he is Levi Ackerman, humanity’s strongest, ready to give his life for the cause. He says he’s selfish, but Sakura never thought for a moment that he is. A selfish man wouldn’t do this. A selfish man wouldn’t sacrifice himself for his people.

Underneath them, the ground rumbles again. “I’ll fight,” he says. “I’ll die fighting. But Sakura—this isn’t your war. No matter what happens, you choose survival. You choose to live.” It’s not a request, but an order.

“No,” she spits, and she hardly recognizes her own voice. “I choose _you_.”

He regards her for one last moment. She hates, _hates_ how calm he is. “Fine,” he says as he turns sharply, his cloak flying as he spins. “Do what you want. Come, the stables are this way.”

She doesn’t know what to make of his answer, but she follows him anyway.

* * *

It happens fast. So fast.

She sees Mikasa and Armin running towards the one they call Eren. She sees a single Titan from within the walls slowly turning to head in their direction, surely with the intention of stopping them where they stand. She sees Levi barking out orders. She sees all of the chaos around her, but she hears none of it.

What she hears is something loud. It’s like a thunderclap, despite the clear blue sky, and it is deafening enough to make her cover her ears.

She sees a small horde of regular-sized Titans (it’s ironic now that something standing at fifteen meters tall could be considered _regular_ ) and already knows that it’s her job to take care of them. She rides her horse to the heart of the storm, determined to take them down quickly so she could join Levi in facing the Wall Titan, but even she doesn’t know how this will end because there are hundreds of them, thundering along into the ocean, and if they keep on getting in Eren’s way, he will just send more until they’re all dead.

But then she hears someone scream Levi’s name, and she can’t help but turn to look back. He’s flying through the air, knocked off of his horse, a trail of blood following his body’s trajectory as he lands on the ground, still. Sakura’s eyes widen.

A second thunderclap, so loud her head is splitting, and she knows what’s happening. She can already feel the ground opening up from under her.

( _Is this it? Is this the end? Was she brought here so she could save his life once, and is she being taken away now because this was always where he was meant to die? In this moment, in this place, in an impossible battle?_ )

No. It can’t be. There needs to be more than this. Levi didn’t survive this long for _this_.

She jumps off her horse to close even the smallest amount of distance between them and shoots a cable out at him— _please reach him, please_ —

It lands right in his shoulder and she retracts.

The last thing she feels before the darkness swallows her up is his ragdoll of a body colliding with hers, and her holding onto him for dear life.


	2. Chapter 2

When Levi comes to, it is quiet, and everything hurts.

He opens his eyes and tries to sit up, but pain shoots all the way up his side. He hisses at the feeling and lays back down.

He is outside. The ground underneath him is hard.

“Oh my God, oh my _God_ —” A blur of pink, and then two bright green eyes staring at him. “Levi? Levi, please, say something.”

He looks at her and faintly thinks, _oh._ “You’re alive,” he says, voice raspy.

A jumble of words fall out of her mouth at lightning speed and his brain can’t quite keep up, especially because she shoves a canteen to his lips and pours water into his unsuspecting mouth. He chokes, and she apologizes hastily.

“I didn’t see what happened, but it looked like some debris caused by the Wall Titan’s walking flew your way. Luckily it didn’t hit your head, or else you definitely would have died—but how many times am I going to have to stitch your guts back together, huh? The human body is complex, you know—I might make it look easy, but it really does take some time and effort.” His eyes scan her from top to bottom; she looks unscathed, but her uniform is stained red and brown with blood. He can only assume it’s his.

He turns his head to stare skyward. “Did we manage to stop Eren?” If it’s this quiet, there are only two possibilities: the first is that somehow, some way, Mikasa and Armin got through to Eren and the Wall Titans stopped their rampage. The second is that they failed, and they have all left the island to terrorize the world beyond.

“I…don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Did you get distracted? Was there somehow something more important than the world going to shit?”

When Sakura doesn’t answer him, he pushes through the pain and sits up.

They’re in a clearing of some sort, but the land is barren. There is hardly any sign of vegetation, save for some weeds growing at the base of some nearby boulders. Levi doesn’t recognize this area. He breathes in, deeply. The air is different.

“Sakura. Where are we?”

“I haven’t really had time to scout the area, but if I had to make an educated guess, I’d say we’re in the Earth Country.”

“The Earth Country? Where the fuck is the Earth Coun—” And then it dawns on him.

“I—” Sakura barely begins her sentence and starts to cry instead, and Levi has a hunch that she’s been holding in her tears until this very moment. “I’m just so glad you’re alive.”

He lays down again. There is nothing that he can do. He isn’t quite sure how he feels.

So he listens to her quiet sobs, and then he listens to the silence.

* * *

Levi isn’t a person who likes to depend on others for help, but he doesn’t have much of a choice other than to let Sakura carry him as they travel. Not only does he have no chakra, but his injuries were monumental and even her miracle work didn’t make him good as new again. Walking would take way too long, and of course, there are no horses here.

They travel mostly in silence. The sensation of Sakura jumping through the trees is similar to using 3DMG, with their cloaks whipping in the wind. Levi floats in and out of consciousness on her back, but when he’s awake, all he can think about is Paradis, how anything they left behind has surely gone to hell, and how any remaining people that he cared about must either be dead or dead fairly soon.

He wonders if what he’s feeling is even a fraction of what Sakura had felt.

* * *

She cries so damn much. It’s a miracle anyone respects her around here.

He had conjured up an image of Konoha in his mind from Sakura’s descriptions, but it’s nothing like seeing it. The wall surrounding it is wooden and short. The gate looks flimsy. A fifteen meter Titan could easily breach it.

They walk into the village together. She is sobbing. “I never thought I’d see this place again.”

But no matter where they go, there are politics. Procedures. The gatekeepers send them immediately to the leader of the village. People stare at them as they walk, whispering as though a ghost is floating through the streets. Around every corner, Levi sees new sights, hears new sounds, smells new smells.

They are nowhere near their destination when he hears her name in the distance. A person far away charges at them at full speed, and Levi doesn’t need to be introduced, he can tell from the bright blond hair and that orange jumpsuit exactly who it is.

Naruto tackles Sakura in a hug so hard they both fall over, and despite the myriad of emotions brewing in his stomach right now, Levi can’t help but feel happy for her.

* * *

They have so many questions for her. What happened? Where did she go? What is she wearing, and what are those weapons hanging from her sides? And who is this man she has with her?

It is louder and far more informal than when Levi’s people were questioning her. Naruto keeps on interrupting Ino, and Ino keeps on snapping at him, and Kakashi is at his desk and doing nothing to stop their arguing. But the noise brings Sakura so much comfort—she hasn’t heard these voices in months, she thought she’d never hear them again, and there they are, in front of her and real and breathing and _alive_.

When it’s all said and done, Naruto walks up to Levi and sizes him up—it’s a funny sight to see him tower over Levi with his nose scrunched and expression skeptical. Levi’s eyes narrow at him, neck craning upwards in some weird battle of testosterone.

“I don’t know about him, Sakura-chan,” Naruto says. “He’s so short.”

Levi grabs him by the collar and yanks him down. “You wanna say that again, punk?” Sakura manages to separate them without much trouble, but it looks like they’re off to a rocky start.

And then, finally, Kakashi speaks. “Are we going to tell Sasuke?”

For a moment, the room falls silent. Sakura suddenly realizes that it’s been a while since she’s even thought about Sasuke. And then she asks, “What is there to tell him?”

“You were just gone. Disappeared. Poof.” Naruto uses hand gestures to articulate his point. “And we couldn’t find you after weeks of searching, so we thought you were dead. We sent Sasuke a message at his last known location to tell him, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t come to your funeral either—oh wait, we need to cross out your name on the epitaph! Is that allowed?”

Beside her, Levi mutters under his breath. “Typical.”

“I guess we should let him know I’m alive,” she says. “If he even checks his mail?”

“I’ll pass the message along,” Kakashi says. “I’m glad you’re okay, Sakura. Get some rest. We can talk more later.”

Everyone demands one more hug from Sakura before they’re allowed to leave. Naruto squeezes her so tight she struggles to breathe, and he tells her that Sai will be back from a mission in a few days so she’ll see him then. When Ino hugs her, she whispers to Sakura about Levi, “He looks like a weird one, but I guess I’ve seen weirder,” to which Sakura gives her a friendly jab in the side.

Kakashi ruffles her hair on their way out the door. “Welcome back, kiddo.”

* * *

“It’s green tea,” Sakura explains when Levi peers into the cup she offers him.

He takes a sip. The flavor is different from black tea, but it isn’t bad.

The air in her apartment is musty and everything is covered in a thin layer of dust, but that’s to be expected. He would start cleaning immediately if he didn’t feel so out of place.

He understands now, the heartbreak Sakura felt. She has family here. Friends. An entire life. What did he leave behind by coming here? An impossible war? Inevitable death? Nearly every person who was important to him was already dead before this happened.

He thinks of Hange, and then he tries not to.

Sakura is bustling around and saying things, so he focuses on her voice instead. “I know it’s disgusting in here, I promise I’ll clean it up tomorrow—it’s actually really good luck that no one decided to buy this place or else we’ll be homeless—you should sit down! Oh wait, everything’s too dirty to sit, right? Let me find a rag—”

“If you have a duster,” he interrupts her calmly, “I can clean up the couch and stay there tonight.”

Sakura stops her rummaging underneath her sink and looks at him. “Why? My bed is big enough for the both of us.” For some reason, this sentiment surprises Levi. “What, you think that just because I’m home, I wouldn’t want you anymore?”

He doesn’t answer her question, but his silence is answer enough.

“Oh, Levi. No. Nothing has changed.” Sakura walks up to him and takes the cup of tea from his hands, setting it aside. When she kisses him, she feels perfect. She feels like the only thing that’s real here.

“Were we the only ones who ended up here?” he asks when they pull apart. “Did no one else fall through with us?”

She frowns. “I think only I was meant to fall through. But I saw you just lying there, and it looked like you were going to die, and I knew that you would if I didn’t save you, so…I managed to take you with me. Are you mad?”

“No. It is what it is. Thank you for saving me. Again.”

“It’s like I said—I choose you. I’ll always choose you.”

She says that, but things are different now. Levi isn’t sure if she means what she says.

* * *

He feels like a ghost, floating through the days. There are no wars to fight. There is no chain of command to follow. For once, Levi is forced to ponder his life.

“I’ll start researching cross-dimensional jutsu,” Sakura says one day over breakfast. “I bet there’s a higher chance of getting back from here than getting here from there.”

“Don’t bother,” he says. The scowl is set deep on his lips as he continues to struggle with his chopsticks. The cuisine here is different, as are the utensils, and it is infuriating that he has to use literal sticks to pick up his food.

“Why not? You don’t want to go back?”

“It’s not about wanting to.” He finally gives up and puts down the chopsticks, opting instead for the fork that Sakura had pre-emptively placed in front of him. “I left the Underground and made it to the surface. And from there, I made it here. I don’t think there’s a reason it’s me over anyone else, but the fact is that I’m here, and it’s safer here than it is there. That’s all there is to it.”

“Aren’t you worried about Hange?” she asks quietly.

Levi has to hesitate before he answers. Considering the amount of time he was unconscious for and the week it took to travel from the Earth Country to Konoha, whatever was going to happen would have already happened. “She can handle herself. And if she dies, it will be an honorable death.” Because the truth is, even if he does worry about her, what could he possibly do? Even if Sakura does find a way for him to go back, how much time will have passed? What will he do if he returns and discovers there’s nothing left?

No. The risk is too great. And if Levi has ever been good at anything, it’s making do with what he has. This is what he has now—and if he’s being honest, things could be far worse.

“I have some money saved up,” Sakura tells him. “We could buy a space. Fix it up into a teahouse.”

From across the table, he stares at her. There is hope in her smile.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and returns to his food.

* * *

Sakura never thought she’d say this, but she missed ramen so much.

It’s a week after her return to Konoha, and she finally manages to spend some alone time with Naruto. The smell of Ichiraku’s signature bone broth permeates through the air, and in the spirit of her best friend, she slurps it loudly from the bowl. The flavor is rich and deep—it reminds her of some gravy she once had in Levi’s world.

“So let me get this straight,” Naruto says for the umpteenth time. “They were _humans_?”

“Yeah. Like, everyone on the island is part of a race of people that could turn into these things if they were injected some sort of special fluid. They were so freaky, you don’t even know.”

Her best friend scratches his head as he tries to wrap his mind around this concept. “They’re humans but they eat other humans? For fun?”

“Yeah.”

“Except they don’t actually need to eat to survive?”

“That’s the crazy thing!” It’s easy to talk about it now, in retrospect, when she’s safe. But the truth is, those Titans will forever haunt her dreams. She will never forget the faces of the people she was too slow to save, and the sounds they made moments before their deaths. “The thing is, Naruto…that wasn’t the scariest part. Levi’s people—they’re not shinobi. I don’t even know if they have chakra systems. They’re just…normal. And so many of them die for nothing.”

“That’s…” Naruto puts down his bowl. “Honestly so horrible. I hate that you went through that all by yourself.”

“I wasn’t alone. I had Levi.”

“What exactly does that mean, Sakura-chan? Is he just going to keep living here from now on? Is he going to keep living with _you_ from now on?” She knows what he’s really asking underneath all of his questions, but he doesn’t ask her outright, and she doesn’t answer him outright.

“It’s not like he has any money. Or knows how this place works. He was there for me when I was lost, I’m not just going to abandon him here.”

“What do you think Sasuke would say about all this?”

Sakura sets down her chopsticks. “Who cares what Sasuke-kun would say? He’s not here, Naruto, he can’t say anything. He’d rather be out there, all by himself in this vast world, than with us. Why do we always have to think about him when he never once returned the favor?”

From the way his eyes widen with hurt, she knows she crossed a line. “Sakura-chan.”

She’s changed. She might not have noticed it happening, but she’s different now. Living within the walls of Paradis, spending time with Levi—something about her has immeasurably shifted, and she doesn’t know if it’s for better or for worse.

Levi would say it’s not about being better or worse. It just is.

There is something so beautiful, she thinks, about the way he just sees things as they are. Perhaps, as they’re meant to be.

A melancholy feeling sits in her stomach when she parts ways with Naruto that night. It’s not the first time they haven’t seen eye to eye, and she knows they’ll be alright in the end, but she doesn’t know how to make him see what she sees. She doesn’t know if there would even be a point.

* * *

Sakura’s sheets are much softer than anything the military barracks had to offer, her bed bigger, her pillows heftier. Levi takes pleasure in being able to stretch out without worrying that he’d accidentally knock her to the floor.

His eyes open when he feels her move, watching and feeling the way she trails small kisses all the way up his arm, until her mouth meets his.

Her palm rests against his cheek as she peers at him. “You seem…different.”

“Different how?”

“You sleep through the night more often now. And you seem to have less things on your mind these days.”

Levi reaches up to touch her hair, and he twirls a lock of it between his fingers. “There haven’t been too many pressing matters to think about recently,” he murmurs.

“Is that a good thing?”

He knows what she’s getting at. They’ve been here for weeks, and he has done nothing. Sakura isn’t taking any missions for the time being, but she still works at the hospital, so the most he does when she’s not around is wander through the village and simply just see new things, and occasionally be accosted by one of her friends. Otherwise, he cleans her apartment, because he has quickly learned that she likes to leave messes in her wake.

“It’s not a bad thing,” he settles on. It’s taking some time for him to grow accustomed to peace; his eyes still shoot open sometimes in the middle of the night when his mind conjures up phantom sounds of someone knocking with an emergency order; and whenever a loud sound booms from the training grounds, his hands unconsciously reach for blades that aren’t there.

Levi, first and foremost, has always been a fighter. That won’t disappear overnight.

“I’m not trying to push you or anything,” Sakura says as her thumb continues to stroke his cheek. “Things are new and crazy and different. But…have you thought about what you might do next?”

He has. Because whatever happens, he can’t waste his life away here. Sakura brought him back from the edge of death not once, but twice—he can’t let that amount to nothing.

It is a cloudless night, and the moonlight shining in through her window casts a pale glow on her skin. She looks different like this—ethereal, everlasting—the candles of his world never quite did her justice, he realizes now. “I think,” he says carefully, “I would like to take up your offer on that teahouse. Eventually.”

She smiles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He rolls until his back faces her, and he feels her shuffling closer, her body warm behind him and an arm draping over his waist. “I always thought I’d die before I had to think about what I’d do after the fighting is done.”

“No more Titans,” she murmurs against his shoulder. “No more fighting.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

He looks out the window at the sky, at the bright moon, at all the stars, and remembers his very first dream of simply being free.

“Yeah, it is.”

* * *

“The recipe says to add just a little bit of flour first…”

“How much is a little bit?”

“I don’t know, it just says a little bit.”

“Only shitty recipes don’t have exact measurements.”

“Well, I wasn’t the one who wrote it, okay?”

As it turns out, the endeavors one must take to open a teahouse in an unfamiliar world are not simple. It doesn’t help that Sakura has no idea how to bake, and Levi has never had dango before yesterday.

(It is sticky and sweet, unlike anything he’s ever had before, and he likes it a lot. This world is full of a variety of food—there are no meat shortages, and they even eat animals from the ocean. Levi didn’t even know that things _lived_ in the ocean.)

It is surreal to him that he is simply spending an afternoon with Sakura making food. He has never had the luxury to do that before, but it feels nice. It feels good. There is little to worry about here, especially when he’s with her.

“Oh look, it’s getting gloopy! That’s a good sign, right?”

“I don’t know, what does your shitty recipe say?”

“We need to take it out and slowly work in more flour—ow, it’s hot—”

Just as he offers her the bowl of flour to incorporate into their gloopy mess, she freezes. Levi freezes too because his reflexes are forever a learned response, but for a long moment he doesn’t notice anything. It isn’t until a few seconds later that he senses what she sensed immediately, which is a presence at the front door.

All the shinobi here are like her; they have a tangible presence, and each person’s is different. Sakura calls them chakra signatures. Levi doesn’t recognize the one at the door.

She goes to the sink first, quickly rinsing her hands clean before going to greet whoever it is. Levi trails behind her, slower, and he’s wiping his hands dry with a small towel as he enters the living room to see the guest.

Like with Naruto, he doesn’t need to be introduced. He knows the moment he sees him.

Uchiha Sasuke is a tall man with broad shoulders and empty eyes. He wears a black cloak that covers him from head to toe and his chakra signature is staggering; Levi is surprised it took him as long as it did for him to notice it. At first glance, nothing about Sasuke reminds him of himself, but he remembers those early days with Sakura when she would look at him with distant eyes, clearly thinking about this man in the doorway, and he decides that they must share some characteristics. The thought doesn’t sit well with him.

“Sasuke-kun,” Sakura says, and something about the suffix on his name makes Levi’s stomach twist.

Sasuke says nothing and enters the apartment. Sakura closes the door behind him. “What are you doing here?”

He surveys her home, and his eyes land on Levi. Levi unconsciously straightens his spine, although there is no hope of intimidating him. He’s just a civilian to him, and a short one at that. Sasuke’s gaze only lingers on him for a moment before his attention returns to Sakura. “Kakashi told me you were alive.”

“Yeah, like, months ago.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“You’re always busy.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“I know. It’s…complicated. I’m sorry.”

“You drop off the face of the earth for a few months, and when you come back, you suddenly start living with some other man? What is that about?”

Sakura’s jaw drops, mouth agape. If Levi didn’t have such control over his emotional responses, he might look very much the same. “I…That’s what you’re concerned about? You think I’m dead for _months_ and that’s the first thing you ask about? Not how I am? Not what happened? Not what I’ve been through?”

Sasuke glances at Levi again. “We’re talking in private.” And he sweeps away in the direction of Sakura’s room—she stalks after him, incredulous and angry.

Levi sits on the couch and waits. He can’t hear Sasuke speak, but Sakura’s voice is clearly audible through the walls when she shouts, and she doesn’t have many nice things to say.

Ten minutes later, when they emerge from her room, Sasuke appears much less composed than he was when he arrived. His steps land heavier on the floor, and when he looks at Levi, his eyes narrow with cold accusation. As he strides towards him, Levi stands from the couch—he needs to look upwards to make eye contact with him, but he has never been afraid of enemies larger than himself.

“That is not the Sakura I know. What have you done with her?” There is poison in Sasuke’s voice.

“I just loved her,” Levi says evenly, “the way she should’ve always been loved.”

Whatever Sasuke expected him to say, it was not that. He glares daggers at Levi for several seconds longer before turning and walking away. The front door slams behind him loudly, leaving the apartment in silence and Levi’s heart in his throat.

Behind him, Sakura’s voice is meek. “You love me?”

He does not move. He does not turn to look at her. She walks until she stands in front of him, and she asks him again. Her bright eyes are wide with earnest, and he can’t not answer her.

“I’m here, aren’t I? I stayed.”

She frowns. “Don’t say that. I’m not the reason you stayed.”

“You were a factor. Don’t discount that.”

Sakura reaches out and touches his face. Her hand against his skin is comforting; he closes his eyes.

“I love you too,” she says quietly, and dips her head down to kiss him.

Sakura is a person who believes in fate. She can look at any situation and pull meaning from it, even if it’s something as insane as dropping into a world full of Titans. In the face of complete hopelessness, thinking that she would never return home, she asked him to start a life with her. When entering a losing battle where he gave her permission to run, she stayed. And when their lives spun and their roles became reversed, where she could easily leave him behind and have her life return to normal, she looked at the man she had loved for the majority of her life and told him no.

From the moment Levi met her, he thought she was extraordinary—in her strength, in her faith, in her unbelievable stubbornness. He’s not like her; he can hardly see past tomorrow. But whatever it is that brought them together, whether it be fate or just pure chance, he thinks he really landed with the good end of the bargain.

* * *

“C’mon, you’re saying you’re not even a little bit curious? Not even in the tiniest corner at the back of your mind?”

Levi gives Rock Lee a long and hard look, and Sakura sees him thinking. “Fine. But it’s not my fault if he gets hurt.”

“I’m glad you’re so fired up, Levi! It’s invigorating to have the opportunity to meet and spar with another taijutsu comrade!”

Sakura has to stifle a laugh when Levi looks at her with genuine concern. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah, that’s just who he is. Lee, keep the weights on, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Sakura moves out of the way and sits beside Naruto at the base of a tree to watch Levi and Lee spar. She’d be lying if she didn’t admit that part of the reason why she talked Levi into joining her at the training grounds is because she misses seeing him fight. As the two men take up their initial stances, she’s already entranced by the way Levi holds his weight, the way his arms tense up, the way his white tunic hangs loosely off his toned body.

“I mean,” Naruto says, “I don’t get it, but I guess I kind of do? He’s kind of like Sasuke, in a way.”

“I thought so too, at first. But they’re not the same.”

“I’m going to assume you think he’s better?”

“Would you be mad if I said yes?”

“I guess not. I know what you mean about Sasuke never being around. But that’s just who he is, y’know? He can’t stop, even for a second.”

Levi and Lee are both on the defensive, scoping each other out, exchanging blows that don’t quite land.

“Levi didn’t stop either, Naruto. You weren’t there. You have no idea what it was like. There was never a moment when he wasn’t thinking about the next attack, the next move, the next battle. But despite all that, he still made time for me.” Her head tilts back and she gazes at the leaves above them. “I know I haven’t known him for a long time. But I don’t know how to explain it—this isn’t just some fling, you know, it’s—it’s real and he changed me and I don’t ever want to be without him.”

Beside her, Naruto sighs. “I believe you, Sakura-chan, I do. I just don’t know him like you do. I think I need some time.”

She turns to him and smiles. “That’s fair. He _is_ a bit prickly, I’ll admit.”

“Eh. Sasuke is worse.”

“True.”

Out of the corner of their eyes, there’s a sudden movement. Sakura and Naruto’s attention return to the spar in front of them, and Sakura audibly gasps when she sees Lee fly several feet in the air and land upright, the balls of his feet digging into the ground to regain his footing. He is just as shocked as Sakura is; there is no way a person of Levi’s strength could have sent him flying that far. When she looks at Levi, he’s staring at his own fist, perplexed.

She turns to Naruto, wide-eyed. “Holy shit.”

* * *

Time passes, and sometimes Levi forgets.

Sometimes he forgets his roots deep in the Underground where the light never reaches and everyone lives like the vermin the people up above think they are. Sometimes he forgets his time in the Survey Corps, his 3DMG piled in the corner of their closet and his uniform hung up like some ancient relic. Sometimes he forgets the faces of the people he’s lost—Furlan, Isabel, Petra, Erwin—the list goes on and on.

But he never forgets the Titans. He never forgets what they’ve taken from him. And he never forgets the guilt he feels for surviving. He wishes that he has better emotions associated with his past, but these are ultimately the ones that stay with him. Sakura can see that it pains him, so she never fails to remind him, whispering into his skin over and over again, that he is humanity’s strongest.

He never wanted to be humanity’s strongest. But he was, and he led all of his comrades to their deaths.

Here, he is just Levi. He is the man that showed up one day with Haruno Sakura. When they were in his world, she had said that she hated not having a history there, but he doesn’t feel the same way. There are no expectations of him here. He can just…be.

The world that he lives in and the people that he sees used to just be stories. Naruto’s disgusting habit of slurping ramen broth and getting it all over his clothes was fictional at one point, Kakashi’s annoying tendency to be late just a little detail Sakura mentioned in her musings. These things are real now. And slowly, Levi begins to feel like he belongs.

“Hey!” he barks at the young girl working at the grill. She jumps and turns to him, petrified. “Didn’t I say to turn the squid every thirty seconds? You’ll burn it!”

“Y-Yes, sorry sir, I’ll do better.”

“You better, or else what was the point of hiring you?”

Still muttering to himself, he makes his way out to the front with a rag to wipe down the tables again. At one of said tables near the entrance, he spots Sakura and Naruto and—oh, it’s Sasuke. He visits Konoha once every few months, which Sakura says is far more often than he used to; Levi personally thinks he has some underlying motives, but doesn’t think it’s worth bringing up, especially if Sakura wants to keep the friendship between them. It doesn’t mean he likes the guy, though.

Sakura waves him down, and he begrudgingly walks over to them. “How’s the first day of business going?” she asks, pecking him on the cheek and pulling up a chair for him. There are currently no other customers in the teahouse, so Levi decides to sit.

“Fine. There was a complaint about the dango not being chewy enough, so I’ll need to rework the recipe. Also, I think I have to fire the griller.”

“Mm.” Sakura doesn’t seem quite as concerned as he is over the fact that there is someone completely inept handling the squid. “Oh, I think you guys should try Levi’s stew—it’s a recipe from his world! It’s really good. Great for a cold winter night.”

“It’s not winter,” Sasuke points out, and they all stare at him.

Naruto pats Sasuke on the back. “It’s okay, dude. You can wait until winter. I’ll give it a try, Levi!”

“Sure.” As he stands to prepare Naruto’s order, Sakura grabs his hand. She smiles at him and he thinks, not for the first time and certainly not the last, that her eyes are so stunningly green.

“No more Titans, huh? No more fighting.”

He gives her fingers a squeeze. “No more fighting.”

* * *

Sakura can’t say she knows what happened.

What she knows is that life is a whirlwind of mysteries, and things happen for either no reason at all, or for reasons beyond anyone’s comprehension. She knows that the earth can sometimes split open and swallow you whole and spit you out wherever it pleases. She knows that there are some things in this universe that are too horrifying to ever speak aloud, and there are some things that are so beautiful that they demand to be celebrated.

She and Levi share something that no one else will ever understand. They walk through their days, touched by the stars or maybe by Ymir (she had mentioned this once and he furrowed his brow deeply in distaste), forever having existed in two different worlds, having lived two different lives.

It was hard. God, was it hard.

But it brought them together.

Sakura can’t say she knows what happened. But what she knows is that she will always choose Levi, again and again and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand that's it! I truly had no idea what would happen to these two, but I'm glad they managed to make a life for themselves. I hope you enjoyed their journey together!
> 
> I do have another little fic planned to kind of address the emotional aftermath of this whole situation, so if you're interested, be on the lookout.


End file.
